


There Goes the Ending

by waltzmatildah



Series: So, Throw Me a Line [1]
Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: Angst, Background Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post season one, episode five, <i>Hanging On</i>. Kelly falls apart slowly. Andy is along for the ride. This is nothing new...</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Goes the Ending

_there goes the ending_  
 _it left me in want_  
 _but i've tried everything dea_ r  
 _i am done with my part_  
\- 

“You’re late,” Shay says as she yanks open the car door and throws herself into the passenger seat. The lipstick she’d applied before she left the house hours earlier has smudged in one corner and completely disappeared in the other. I don’t bother to point it out because I know she won’t care. Or she’ll pretend she doesn’t care and I won’t know the difference, so the end result will be the same regardless.

“Yeah,” I say and I shrug my shoulders casually, as though maybe I’d planned to be late all along. “Sorry.”

I think I mean it. The apology I tack on at the end. Andy’s huff of echoed laughter that bounces around for a beat between my ears indicates he doesn’t believe me.

Surprise.

The traffic is thick, slow. There’s a heavy mist hanging in the air and, even though it’s not actively raining, I have to switch the wiper blades on every thirty seconds or so to clear the windscreen and bring the world back into view. The smell of _Shay_ fills the car, faded perfume and stale sweat, cheap beer and cigarette smoke; she’s already changed the radio station. There’s a dance party for one happening in her seat and I wonder how many drinks she’s had. And whether it’s possible to suffocate under the weight of her existence. It’s already that much harder to breathe now she’s here.

I’m feeling morbid.

It’s all his fault.

_You always blame me._

If I do, then I think that it’s only fair, he’s the one that up and died after all.

Being morbid is the prize I get. It’s like winning; only, not.

It’s the opposite of winning.

I shrug my shoulders again, at him this time. If Shay notices she doesn’t say anything. For the second time, I wonder how many drinks she’s had. She’s still got her ridiculous shoes on, zebra print I think, some kind of faux-striped wild animal anyway, so it can’t have been more than eight. She takes her shoes off after eight drinks, without fail.

I know this because I’m usually left to carry them.

_You blamed me when Danielle Winslow caught you cheating on her back in junior high…_

I’m fairly certain that I blamed him because he put a note in her locker telling her he’d seen me holding hands with Nadia Upton in PE.

_Oh, yeah… True. I did do that. Huh._

I almost miss a stop sign. It’s been graffitied over with something obscene, a crude attempt at gutter humour that falls flat, badly. But the presence of the spattered spray-paint isn’t a legitimate excuse because we drive this way every day to get to work. I don’t have an excuse. Shay shrieks from where she’s perched in the passenger seat, braces her hands against the dash as I step on the brakes with a little more force than I’d intended. She always has been a melodramatic drunk; it’s what drew us to her back when she first joined the station.

Remember, Andy? That night at Double Door?

He does, I know he does. 

You’re married, and she’s told everyone, more than once, that she isn’t into guys, but it hasn’t stopped you following her ass around the room with your eyes all night. She’s wearing this pair of tight, blue jeans with a tiny rip just under her left ass cheek, strings of faded white denim hanging from the slit, the barest glimpse of skin, like a beacon you can’t help but stare at.

Jesus, those damn jeans…

 _I remember the jeans…_ and it’s wistful because, yeah, no shit.

You buy her a glass of something girlie. I don’t know what it is, just that it’s pink and bubbly and no doubt shockingly sweet. She takes it and laughs, her blonde hair pulled back into a ridiculous pony tail that almost takes out a different person every time she moves her head. You tilt the lip of your beer bottle into the side of her glass. “Cheers,” you say, and she winks over your shoulder at me even as she’s saying it back.

“Cheers to you, too, Andrew Darden.”

You laugh. And I’m torn between wanting to punch your lights out and roll my eyes.

“Call me Andy,” you correct her. You’re hopeless.

And I love you both.

 

 

 

A car-horn splits the night in two from behind us and a quick glance at Shay’s wild gesticulation tells me I may have overcompensated at the stop-sign. 

_Just drive your car, loser…_

Hey. Dead guy shuts his pie hole.

The next few minutes pass without incident. Shay falls asleep with her mouth open, wide, head tilted back in a manner that cannot, for one second, be comfortable. My own neck aches in sympathy, at least, that’s what I tell myself the cause is tonight, and I contemplate taking a photo of her and sending it to Dawson.

I don’t. I’ll probably regret that later.

Truck twelve from the downtown station passes us heading in the opposite direction. I swear I see Andy sitting up against the window in the back, peering out through the smudged glass and off into the night. My heart lurches up and into my throat, and I have no idea what it is that keeps my foot on the gas. That shuts down every screaming instinct suddenly flared to life inside of me, telling me to stop and turn around and give chase.

If he’s just transferred to the downtown division, if he’s started riding with twelve instead, then he can’t be dead, can he?

But he _wouldn’t_ transfer.

And he _is_ dead.

The sudden surge of elation morphs back to devastation and it all feels like the same thing in the end. Exposed nerve endings and hysteria all the way to my marrow. I wind the window beside me down forcefully and drag in lungful after lungful of ink-black night air. I can feel it filling me up, like smoke. It’s an all too familiar sensation.

But it sure beats emptiness and it’ll do for now.

I carry Shay inside. Literally. One of the shoes she’s managed to keep on all night falls off as I’m dragging her from her seat. I catch sight of it in the foot-well of my car as I use my hip to slam the door shut. She’ll think she’s lost it when she wakes up in the morning and I contemplate whether a trip back to retrieve it is worth the effort.

_It’s not._

Thanks.

And there’s no need for him to pretend he’s not taking note of how her shirt has ridden up on the one side either. Predictable perv.

_Hey, I’m a happily married man, Severide…_

I shut my eyes against his sudden allusion to his wife. Struggle not to drop Shay, and find my keys, and walk up the stairs without killing us both. 

I can’t even begin to count the amount of times Heather’s made me promise her over the years. We’re sitting out the back of your place and you’ve gone inside to get more beers. She’s got her long fingers wrapped around the delicate stem of a wine glass and when I look at her, I can’t for the life of me figure out how she ended up married to you.

Harsh, I know. But also, the truth.

The kids are long since gone to bed. The warm summer night is lingering and my skin is sweat tacky, even now. There’d been a house-fire earlier that morning. Getting towards the end of shift. I’m still on truck. We’re still there. Together. 

“I trust you, you know.” She says the words apropos of nothing but the metaphorical chirping of crickets.

“Trust me with what?”

“With him. With Andy.”

“With Andy?” I parrot her words back like I’m asking her a question, even though I’m not. I need to buy some time to come up with the right combination of consonants and vowels. 

“To look out for him. I trust you to have his back.”

I give up on the words I’m looking for. Offer her a nod instead and hope it looks for the most part sincere. I’ve not had a lot of experience with the notion of this, with the idea that I might be able to keep someone safe. I know for a fact that I’d die for you, and maybe that’s the same thing in the end.

Maybe that’s what she trusts.

“Promise me that I’m right,” she says, the barest hint of desperation in her tone, “Promise me that I’m right to trust you.”

I’m pleased in the same quantities that I’m terrified. It’s a lot of pressure, you know; your life in my hands. I’m no-one to no-body. You’re a husband and a father. It’s not really a fair trade.

“I promise.”

Heather hates me now; even though I don’t blame her for it, I wish he could talk to her. Tell her that I’m sorry. Let me see the kids.

Please.

But I know he won’t. Talk to her, that is. She’s far too well-adjusted for him to be doing that.

_What, and you’re not?_

Not what?

_Well-adjusted._

He’s being facetious. There are air quotes slung casually around the phrase when he says it. I can see them as clearly as I can see him, watching me from the top of the stairs I’m battling to climb, a sleeping Shay still nestled in my arms, oblivious. Well-adjusted and I have not been friends for quite some time now and he’s very aware of this fact because it is all his fault.

_Oh yeah, here we go again…_

 

 

 

I get Shay onto her bed without too much drama. Pull her covers up and over her as she’s already settling into the ridiculous excess of pillows she insists she needs. Her other shoe fell off just outside her bedroom door and I bend down to grab it on my way out. Something explodes in my shoulder, there’s a pop; audible as it rattles against my ear-drums. The whole world turns bright, bright white then. 

I scream.

I’m sure of it.

Or maybe that’s all him, ten steps away at the other end of the hall.

I wake up on the floor. It’s cold. And I’m shaking. 

All I can hear is the pain.

It’s a living thing moving around inside of me, is taking up residence in my blood stream. In my nerve endings. In the parts of me that used to belong to him.

He’d hate that I’m being sentimental. But I’m pretty sure my neck is properly broken now, not just the half broken that it was before, and so I don’t particularly care. I attempt a cursory wriggle of the fingers I can see from the slumped position I must have fallen to. They move, sluggishly, and something that tastes a lot like relief turns over in my gut. I’m not paralysed. 

At least, not yet.

_I, ah, I think you should keep your head really still._

He sounds nervous. He’s making _me_ nervous. Or _more_ nervous. I want to tell him this but I can’t make my lips move. 

Maybe I _am_ paralysed.

Andy… please.

 

 

 

I can hear Shay. She’s snoring softly, in that delicate way only girls can snore. 

_You should call out to her._

But I can’t make my lips move.

Remember?

My neck feels weird. Hot when the rest of me is arctic shelf freezing. I wonder if I’m being strangled, and I start to panic against the sensation of hands wrapping around my throat. If I shut my eyes I can see them. Thick, calloused. There’s dirt under the torn nails and the knuckles are white, bloodless from effort. 

I just hope they get the job done quickly.

_You need to breathe, idiot._

I open my eyes and he’s crouched opposite me, on the other side of the hallway. His back against the wall, arms wrapped around his shins and chin resting on his knees. His hair is a mess. I think there’s garden debris stuck in it, towards the back, a smudge of something grey across his forehead, along the curve of one cheek, and I guess we’ve been out in the tree house in his backyard, playing. 

We’re seven again and my knee is bleeding. You’re watching, curious, as the dark blood snakes a trail to my filthy sock. We’ve been told not to come here but we do anyway. We always do. I’m panicking because, bloodied knee or not, I’m the one that will get into trouble.

It’s always me.

It’s always my fault.

_See?_

Even when it’s not.

You push towards me, trip the tip of one finger across my shin and through the blood. Use it to paint the palm of your right hand before reaching it out in my direction, gap toothed grin, wide.

“Blood brothers?”

“Ew, gross. And it doesn’t even work like that anyway, dumb-ass.”

In reality, I have no idea how it works. All I know is the sight of my own insides, leaking, is making me feel sick and dizzy and I’m trying like hell not to be obvious about it.

_Kelly, hey, talk to me. Are you okay?_

And he’s always been able to see straight through my thinly veiled attempts at subterfuge. He could do it when he was seven years old, and he can definitely do it now.

No, I answer him.

I don’t even bother with a lie.

 

 

 

I wake up again. Hours have passed this time. Shay’s curtains, still pulled askew from the morning before, filter weak sunlight to a point just south of my right foot. Her shoe, the ridiculous zebra print monstrosity that had been my undoing just hours earlier, sits out of reach, mocking.

I tempt rolling over, inch by inch until I’m flat on my back. I’m not yet certain whether the position is better or worse than the previous one, but that I remain conscious for the manoeuvre must count as something of a win.

_You’re getting old, Severide._

Well, one of us has to.

_Cheap shot, man. Cheap, dirty shot._

I reach my hand out, like maybe he’ll lean forward himself, take up the slack and haul me to my feet. He blinks dumbly, and I think, maybe, that he wants to. That he would if he could. His eyes drop to his own fingers, where they’re still wrapped around faded shins.

 _I’m sorry_ , he says, and I know he means it.

I’m sorry, too.

I get myself to standing in the end. It’s a slow process and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely convinced my head was about to roll off my shoulders the entire time. My muscles are stiff beyond belief. From my toes to my forehead, I _ache_. I risk bringing a hand to the side of my neck, risk pressing down, testing. It feels no worse than before. And I know exactly how to make it go away.

My hands shake violently as I paw through my work bag in search of the strip of pills I know are tucked away in there. I’ve got them stashed all over the place in case I’m ever caught out. Something tells me being caught out is the least of my problems right now, but I’m the first to admit my vision may be a little cloudy on the matter.

I palm three of the pills; tip my hand to my mouth and dry swallow. The motion as familiar to me as breathing.

_You’re a fucking idiot, you know that?_

He hardly ever swears, I think I could count on one hand the amount of times I’ve heard him do it. That he’s swearing now, at me, I know he’s serious.

We’re at a party somewhere south of the city. There’s a line of coke cut into a thin, white string on the jagged piece of mirror I’ve just been handed. I have no idea who it belongs to, but the beers I’ve already swallowed tell me it’s mine now. I can see you on the other side of the room. You’ve got your hand half way up the shortest denim skirt I’ve ever seen, and your eyelids are more shut than they are open. 

You were supposed to be sober driver tonight, but I can sense we’ll both be on foot when this thing gets closed down. Which it will. I bring the line of powder up to my face, forego reaching into my wallet for a dollar bill to roll and just snort the lot straight from the glass.

The familiar burn, the way my sinuses immediately unblock, I wonder why it’s been so long since I last let myself do this.

I wet the tip of my finger and drag it through the crumbs that remain. Lick them off and wait for my tongue to go as numb as the rest of me already is.

Next thing I know, you’ve got your fingers wrapped tight, too tight, around my left bicep. And you’re dragging me outside, outside and across an expanse of rain slick grass towards the street.

“You’re high, aren’t you?” You shove me roughly and I stumble. Trip over something invisible. Trip over myself.

“I’m not high,” I counter, immediately defensive and trying desperately to put a lid on the one thousand other things I suddenly feel the urge to tell you. “Did you know that Alex and Kane went snowboarding somewhere in Canada during midterm break? I’ve never been snowboarding before in my _life_. How the hell did we get to here and never have been snowboarding? I think we should organise a trip. We wouldn’t even have to go all the way to Canada you know, which is good because I don’t have a passport and neither do-”

You’re staring at me, hands on hips, one foot in the gutter where you’ve shoved me and another on the curb. “Oh, my god. You fucking _are_ high.”

You’re angry at me. I guess I knew you would be; I think that’s probably why I checked to make sure you were otherwise occupied before I let myself give in to the temptation in the first place.

“Come on, Andy, it’s not that big of a deal,” I say, and your eyes widen briefly and you tense up, like maybe you’re about to punch me in the face. I tell myself that I’m bigger than you these days and that you wouldn’t dare to risk it.

But, deep down in the parts of myself I very rarely stop to think about, I know that you won’t hit me as surely as I know that I’d never, ever hit you back.

Shay drops down the last of the stairs and into the living room then, and I exhale shakily at how close I just came to being caught out with the painkillers.

“Jesus,” she says, word wrapped around a yawn she doesn’t bother to cover. “You look worse than I feel and at least I know there’s _minimum_ five tequila shots behind why I have no desire to go to work today.”

I don’t say anything. I have nothing to say.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I concede finally, turning my back and walking towards the kitchen for no real reason other than to stop her looking at me. “Just didn’t really get much sleep I guess.”

It doesn’t work.

She’s leaned up against the refrigerator and staring at me intently as I bend over the sink and fill a glass to half full with water from the tap. I’ve never even taken two of the painkillers at the same time before now, let alone three, and the thought of them bouncing around inside of me is making me nauseous, jittery.

I’m not sure if it’s all in my head, or if I’m literally about to vomit them back up again.

“Seriously, you should just call in and go back to bed.”

“I’m fine,” I say. Automatic pilot.

“Yeah?” The word is all challenge, she knows me almost as well as he used to. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s fine. The arm is fine. I’m fine.”

_If you keep saying it, Severide, one day she might actually believe you. What would you do then, huh?_

“Right,” she says, drinking juice straight from the carton. “Whatever.”

 

 

 

We’re back at the station less than fifteen minutes after a factory fire and rescue job that had been an _inch_ from going completely pear-shaped before the Chief is leaning round the corner and into the locker room, saying he wants to see me in his office as soon as I’m done here, his eyebrows raised like he’s asking me a question, even though we both know he’s not.

I force back a nod; keep my expression blank, as if I have no idea what he could possibly want.

Try to convince myself it’s the truth.

_You’re a goddamn mess, Severide. The Chief is the least of your worries right now._

Heh.

I contemplate reaching into the back of my locker and grabbing a pill to swallow down before I head in there. Try to weigh up whether the Chief is more likely to notice that I’m high or that I’m in agony.

And which of the two options I’d most prefer.

_Like I said, Kelly. Least of your damn worries…_

I’m not sure why the version of him that exists in my head isn’t nearly as helpful as the one that used to exist for me in real life. If I analyse all the contributing factors, then I could probably say it’s because the words he’s telling me now are just the words that I come up with. Some tainted caricature of his voice and his thoughts and his dreams, muddled together like a badly made cocktail. Some of the ingredients are wrong. Or mismeasured. 

Or left out altogether.

My flawed interpretation of everything that made him _Andy_.

My dad dies on a Sunday afternoon. We’re thirteen, and we’re down the road playing baseball, have been since mid-morning. Your mother appears at the edge of the park and starts waving her arms around at us madly before launching into a _run_ across to where we’re playing. My mouth falls open as she stumbles and trips and almost falls flat on her face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your mother run. Not like this anyway.

And maybe not ever.

You’re a handful of metres to my left, and as I glance sideways at you, the look on your face tells me you’ve never seen it either.

“Mom?” you say. And there’s a hint of panic in your voice that sends a shiver down my spine. Like maybe you’ve already figured out something I’m yet to catch onto.

“Andy?” I say. My voice wobbles in the same way that yours just did only I’m not exactly sure why yet.

I’m waiting for her to approach you, to change her line of sight and head in your direction instead of the lurching way she’s currently heading in mine. Only she doesn’t. I keep looking between the both of you, wildly. Confused to the very tips of my toes.

“Kelly, honey,” she says as she drops to the grass at my feet, out of breath from the effort her sprint has taken as her voice shatters around the words. 

And my whole world shatters with them.

“Lieutenant,” the Chief says. “Is everything okay?”

It takes every ounce of strength I possess not to laugh.

And laugh and laugh and laugh.

“Fine,” I reply with an aborted nod. Succinct and, hopefully, believable.

“Right,” he says, and his tone tells me I’ve fallen over at the first hurdle. He walks around his desk towards me, leans back against it as though settling in for something of a chat. “Let’s start this again.”

I feel my forehead crease into a frown. My confusion, genuine this time.

Again. 

And some days I think it’s is my perpetual state of being.

“The fact that you’re _not_ fine is obvious to everyone around here, not just to me, so how about we skip that question and the lie that just came with it and move onto part two?”

I swallow, and the motion hurts.

I already know this isn’t going to end well.

Where’s Andy when I need him? Asshole.

“What’s going on, Severide?” 

“Nothing,” I say, desperately clinging to a lie that’s getting so big it’s about to devour me whole. I almost wish that it would.

“Kelly,” he sighs, endlessly disappointed, and when the Chief calls you by your first name, you know shit’s about to get real. “Take a seat.”

He moves behind me to shut the door, to pull the blinds closed, and I’m trapped suddenly, a proverbial deer caught in the looming headlights of a Mac truck. I look at the chair he’s indicating me towards like, maybe, if I sit as he’s asking me to, I’ll never get up again.

Will you wait for me, Andy?

I think I’m coming.

 

 

 

Dad’s funeral is Wednesday afternoon. I struggle into the same suit I wore to Uncle Richard’s wedding a few months ago, and the sleeves are a little too short; the pants a little too tight. You’re sitting on the end of my bed watching me attempt to knot my tie. 

I’m making an absolute mess of it, which is nothing new really. My hands are shaking and I’m wordlessly ordering myself not to vomit or scream or cry. At least, not in front of you.

It’s ridiculous though.

You’ve seen me do all three on numerous occasions.

You’re in front of me suddenly. Hands on my shoulders and looking me straight in the eye.

“I’ve got this,” you say, and your hands close in on mine, take the fabric away from me and deftly twist it into something resembling a Windsor knot. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. You loop it back over my head quickly, tighten it into position beneath my starched collar as I stand there and stare back at you, unmoving.

You step away quickly before making a noise in the back of your throat, something I can’t decipher. And then you’re moving again. Wrapping your cartoonishly skinny arms around mine in the most awkward attempt at a hug I’ve ever encountered. 

“I’m so sorry about what happened to your dad,” you say, your voice muffled into my shoulder. I think I go somewhere else in my head then. Don’t quite make it all the way back to earth until my mother’s pulling my socks off and pouring me into my bed too many hours later.

“I’ve lost men, you know, over the years. Too many of them to count…”

Chief Boden is speaking again.

I think all my blood drains to my toes.

 _Heads up, Severide. This one’s gonna be all about me…_

“Losing Andy, that was hard.”

I nod because the Chief looks like he’s waiting for a response and I have absolutely nothing verbal to offer him.

“But I’m not even going to _pretend_ I understand what that was like for you. No-one expects you to be fine, Severide. Your best friend died. No-one expects you to be fine with that.”

I can’t move. 

Andy’s sitting on the edge of the chair I’ve been swallowed by. If I turn my head I know I’ll see him nodding his own and feigning exaggerated interest in a conversation that has suddenly become all about him. I can feel the ethereal pressure of his hip against my upper arm and I lean into it an inch or so. 

I always did need him more than he ever needed me.

_That’s utter bullshit and you know it._

Maybe, I concede. Maybe not.

“But I do expect you to get some help if it starts to impact on how you do your job.”

My knees are bouncing, the motion, completely out of my control. I want to shove my fingers in my ears and make it stop.

Please, just stop.

_Kelly, pay attention. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you…_

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup…

I blink, and I’m absolutely mortified to discover that I’m crying. In the mad panic that immediately follows, I say the first thing that pops into my head.

“My neck is broken.”

The letters that make up the words I’ve just spilled scatter about on the tile beneath our feet like glass marbles. I want to scoop them back up and swallow them back down and run like hell.

“What did you just say?”

But I can’t. I can’t run like hell. I can barely move.

I can barely _breathe_.

This is it.

This is the end.

 

 

 

“I’ve got something I need to tell you,” you say, and immediately I can sense that you’re nervous. You’re scuffing the toe of your shoe against the carpet and tapping the side of your head against the chipped wood of my bedroom door frame.

It’s usually enough to make me nervous, too. You being nervous. Only this time I already know what it is you’re about to say.

I can read you like a _book_ these days.

“Yeah?” I say instead, reaching for the remote so I can turn my CD player down a notch or several. Eddie Vedder probably isn’t the person I’d choose to soundtrack what I know is coming. If I could have the time over I’d pick something a little slower, I think, but he’ll have to do for now.

Short notice and all that.

“What’s up?”

You venture a few more steps inside my room, and the look on your face says you think I might be about to launch across the floor and attack you. In reality, I’m doing my best not to lose my shit completely and laugh at your stupid ass.

“So…”

You trail off, your eyes doing a loop of my room, like maybe you’re scanning the surrounds for potential weapons.

“Jesus, Andy, just spit it out.”

I can’t help myself. I remember that specifically, the feeling I used to get that would make it almost impossible for me not to tease you. Like a tic that would get worse the longer I held it in.

“I, uh,”

It’s almost painful.

“I asked Heather to marry me.” Your hands are kind of poised out in front of you, and I can’t help but wonder what the hell it is about me that makes you think you have to be this careful.

“She said yes,” you finish, and your voice kind of hitches in surprise, like maybe you can’t quite believe it all happened that way. 

I reach behind me and grab a handful of pillow, swing around suddenly and hurl it in your direction.

“You fucking idiot! Of course she said yes!”

You clutch the pillow you just caught to your chest, giddy and grinning.

“You’re not mad?”

“Why the hell would I be mad?”

“I dunno,” you shrug, and your voice drops, “it’s just… it’s always been just us, you know and I thought…”

“Hey, Darden?”

“Yeah?” you say, looking up at me like you’re the five year old I never got to meet.

“You two have been a thing forever, it hasn’t been ‘just us’ for years now. It’s fine. It’s more than fine. I’m a big boy, and I’m happy for you, okay?” I’m trying to be sincere with you in a way I haven’t been for as long as I can remember. We usually avoid this sort of stuff now; it kind of comes with the job. 

Avoidance.

The Chief slides off his desk and paces around in a tight circle once. Like maybe he can’t decide, from the hundreds of options that have flooded his synapses all of a sudden, which one of them to choose.

In the end he grabs his chair and drags it around the room until it’s square in front of mine. Then he sits.

I’m terrified.

And I’ve been sitting still for too long now. I know that when I move I won’t be able to hide it. 

The pain.

_But you don’t need to hide it anymore, Kelly. That’s the beautiful thing about the truth…_

“You better say that again.” The Chief has one of the deepest voices I’ve ever encountered. I don’t really remember what my father sounded like, but, when I try, I often find he sounds just like this. And it’s yet another example of my imperfect memory making things up in the absence of any reliable reference material.

I open my mouth to respond as I’ve been asked, but I can’t. I can sense my jaw work. My teeth hit together. My heart thump and thud against my rib-cage. Everything is feeling, it’s touch, it’s taste. It’s overwhelming sound. I have no room left for making words.

“Lieutenant Severide,” he says. I blink and he blurs out momentarily.

I am too exhausted to care anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I say and I mean it.

 

 

 

“Do I need to get Dawson in here?” the Chief asks. He doesn’t elaborate on why. He doesn’t need to.

“No,” I say through my teeth, though it’s unconvincing at best, even I can see that.

Just to prove my point about the lie, I shift finally. And every conceivable nerve ending in my neck and shoulder, underneath my arm and down into my elbow spasm in unison. 

I stifle a scream as fingers tighten around my knees.

“Look at me, Severide, what’s going on?”

I hold my hand out, palm facing him, pleading for time as I struggle to rein in my rapidly deteriorating ability to breathe.

_Kelly, look at the Chief. He’s trying to help you now. You need to let him…_

_Kelly, you need to let him help you._

It feels like he’s handing me over. And maybe he is. Maybe I am no longer his responsibility. I want to scream at him to shut the fuck up, but he’s right. This is not his job now. It should never have been his job. _I_ should never have been his job.

“Just,” I drag in a breath. It shudders and so do I. I’ve learned enough about shock to know that I’m not far from it. “Just give me a second. Please…”

I count to seventeen in my head and by the time I’m there everything’s started to settle back down. When I open my eyes I can see once more, I have to fight against the urge shut them again because maybe I don’t want to see this. The Chief’s face is mere inches from mine. He looks scared. 

I didn’t think it was possible.

He’s the one that tells me you’re dead. 

I’m still reeling from the explosion inside the house, from the jarring impact that feels like the worst case of whiplash I’ve ever experienced. I sling my mask off as I get outside; toss it to the ground at my feet and double over, coughing.

He’s in front of me before I can move with any real purpose, dragging me further from the house, further away from the rest of the crew.

“Kelly,” he says, and he’s using my first name. 

My blood dries up, like paint in the heat. Cracks and crackles.

“Kelly,” Again.

“No,” I say, my hand twisting into the front of his shirt. Every instinct inside of me telling me to fight.

“It’s Andy,” he says, and he braces himself. Twists his own hand into the front of my jacket to stop me doing something stupid.

He knows me well.

“NO!” I’m struggling violently, and I don’t learn until later that you’re still inside at this point. That you’re still being turned to soot and to ashes and to little more than a set of fucking dental records inside the house. 

I think he doesn’t tell me that part because he knows what I’ll do.

And he’s right.

Of course he’s right.

It’s a promise I made to Heather, after all. Your life for mine. Every damn time.

It’s not supposed to end like this; our story.

It was _never_ supposed to end like this.

 

 

 

“So,” Chief Boden says, releasing my knees from his fierce grip and sitting back slowly, “your neck is broken?”

“Yeah,” I force out and he goes rigid in his chair. I figure I might as well lay it all on the line. “Fractured C5 and all the fun stuff that goes with it.”

“How long?” His tone is clipped. Like there’s a cap on his fury, but that it’s temporary at best.

“Since Andy…” It’s the first time I’ve said his name out loud for weeks. The sound of it echoes, shocking.

The Chief’s hands cover his face and he stands abruptly, marches to the far wall before turning and stalking back towards me.

“You’ve obviously had it checked out.”

“Yeah, once.” I’m a little stuck here because I know I need to avoid getting Shay and Kendra into trouble too. “A friend did an MRI for me.”

“A friend as in Hallie?” And my relief at his incorrect conclusion jump is palpable.

“No, not Hallie, Hallie has no idea. Neither does Matt. Just, a friend.” 

“How long have you known?”

“Too long,” I admit, shrugging. “I’m sorry, I just… I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t see any other options. There _were_ no other options.”

I look him in the eye for the first time in weeks.

“At least, not ones I could live with.”

“You could have come to me.” He sinks back down into the chair opposite me, resigned. “We could have worked something out. You’re not alone, Kelly. You don’t have to fight everything on your own now, just because he’s gone.”

The engagement ring is in an envelope and has been slid beneath the door to my apartment. You’re with me when I find it, my perpetual shadow.

“Don’t open it,” you say. “Give it to me.”

Always the protector.

“It’s okay,” I say back, even though it’s not. Even though _I’m_ not. “It was kind of inevitable from the start, don’t you think?”

I laugh. It’s only small parts hysteria.

“Kelly, don’t do that.”

“Do what?” I say, shrugging as I toss the envelope onto the kitchen bench amid yesterday’s newspaper and a whole week’s worth of mail.

“Don’t pretend like you’re not upset.” You’re standing in the middle of the room. Your boots have left faded prints on the carpet behind you and I focus on them, hard, before turning.

“I’m not,” I lie. Bald-faced. I open the fridge and hide my face in the shelves of leftovers and beer. “Want a drink?” 

“So... what do we do now?” Chief Boden says, and he’s watching me like a hawk, the weight of his gaze, heavy and pointed and still more than a little bit furious.

My right arm is numb, curled limply in my lap. My right leg is pins and needles from my toes to the top of my thigh. And while I’m still partly convinced all I need are the painkillers stashed in my locker, the thought of moving to get them makes me feel ill.

“I think,” I trail off then, too scared to complete the sentence. To make what must happen next _real_.

 _Just spit it out, you fool. It’s all over now, just say the freaking words._

He’s stopped swearing at me. It’s a good sign.

“I think we should probably see if Dawson’s around after all.”

 

 

 

I’m half-way to being strapped in a C-collar when Shay bursts in. I’d wondered how long it would take and what her reaction would be. She doesn’t disappoint.

“What the hell happened?”

She’s freaking out. Absolutely and completely.

Maybe even more than I am.

_Yeah, well, you’ve had some time to get used to the notion. Give her a chance to catch up…_

Fair enough.

“Shay, it’s okay.”

I use my left hand to find her fingers. They’re freezing, they’re always freezing.

I’m supposed to be a pall bearer. I’m under strict instructions to make my way to the front of the church when the last song starts. I’ve been chanting them, the instructions, over and over in my head for the last half hour. There’s a speech I have to get through first.

I think I’m about to pass out.

I’ve written what I want to say in careful print on lined, white paper. I’ve folded it in half and then in half again and I can feel the bulk of it pressed into the pocket of my uniform. I am as prepared for this as I ever was for anything school related. 

A lie: I am the _opposite_ of prepared for this.

There’s a coffin covered in flowers up front. Chief Boden had suggested to Heather that we put your helmet on there amongst them and the screaming that followed means the flowers are all you get.

You’d hate it. I know this with as much certainty as I’ve ever known anything.

The coffin is little more than a ruse anyway; false advertising of sorts.

There is not nearly enough of you left to require a coffin. I’ve seen your body, you’re little more than charcoal and dust now, bud.

_Fuck._

I hear my name mentioned. I figure it’s my cue.

I can’t move.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t _see_.

_I can’t fucking do this…_

Shay’s standing next to me. Her shoulder’s been pressed up against my arm since we walked in here and if she moves I’ll fade away. Of that I am sure.

But she does. Quickly. She turns and grabs my hand and she twists her freezing cold fingers through mine and drags me out into the aisle. I follow her blindly.

I trust her implicitly.

There’s a step up to the pulpit, she slows us down and makes sure I know to navigate it properly. She’d make a good mother, I think, and then I have to bite down on the urge to laugh. You made a great father.

But the notion is ultimately meaningless in the end isn’t it?

Your coffin is to my right.

I refuse to look at it.

Shay reaches across me and snakes her other hand, the one that isn’t twisted into mine, beneath my uniform jacket. Drags the eulogy from where I’ve stashed it and roughly shakes out the pages and lays them flat on the lectern.

There is not nearly enough air in my lungs to make words.

I hate myself that I can’t do this for you.

Shay does it for me.

She keeps her fingers in mine, and I squeeze them, tight. A silent thank you that she acknowledges in kind. She reads my words, and she tells my stories, and she even has the grace to laugh at the jokes I’ve attempted to make.

I stand beside her, rigid. Doing my best not to vomit or scream or smash your coffin to sticks. A thousand other impossibilities I can’t bring myself to name.

 _I’m sorry,_ he says. _I’m so sorry I put you through that. I never wanted to put you through that, Kelly. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

I know. I know he is. None of it was his fault.

 _Yeah,_ he says, and he nods his head as if to emphasise his agreement, _but it’s not yours either._

 

 

 

Hallie’s working the ER when we get there. The initial spike of fear that lances through her _what happened?_ rings of Matt and dread and all her worst nightmares come true.

“Long story,” I hear Shay answer. “Matt’s fine, by the way. This didn’t happen on a job, well, not one from today.”

She finishes with a succinct report that I manage to bleed out into waves of meaningless sound. They’ve pumped me full of narcotics on the way here, and I’m pleasantly numb, warm for the first time in months.

It is summer and school has just stared back. I’m in first grade and am pre-emptively terrified of my teacher. I’ve heard the playground rumours of detentions and spelling tests and making you eat all your lunch, even your stale sandwich crusts, before you’re allowed to go outside.

You’re perched half-way up the concrete steps; your backpack nestled in your lap. It’s got a worn image of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the front of it and I’m inexplicably jealous all of a sudden.

“Hello,” you say, even though we’ve never seen each other before. 

“Hello,” I reply, uncertain and suddenly shy. Your blonde hair is almost white, and your shiny black shoes are laced so perfectly that I wonder if you tied them by yourself or if someone had to help you. I can tie my own shoes, but they’re never as neat as that.

“I’m new here,” you say, “I used to live in Saint Louis, but we just moved here and I’m gonna be in the first grade.”

I don’t know where Saint Louis is. I guess it’s probably far if you’ve had to change schools. I wonder if you’ll be in my class.

“Oh,” is all that I say.

“My mom said I should say hello to everyone that passes me today.”

“Okay.” I tighten my backpack over my shoulder, grip my fingers a little more completely around the strap.

“Do you want to be my best friend?”

I blink back at you, I feel a bit silly. I’ve never had a best friend before. I don’t really know what it means. “Why?”

“Because you’re the first person that’s said hello back,” you explain, matter of fact and with a shrug of your pointy shoulders. “My mom said that’s the important part; that I have to find a friend who says hello back.”

“Oh.” I guess that makes sense.

“So, do you want to? Do you want to be my best friend?”

I consider the proposition with all the seriousness that only a six year old can muster before nodding my head twice, “Yeah, okay.”

“Oh, good!” you say, “I don’t have to sit here anymore!”

You spring up from the steps and fall into place beside me.

“My name’s Andrew Darden,” you tell me, “but you can call me Andy if you want. That’s what my mom calls me.”

“Okay,” I say. It feels like the only word I have in my head. “My name’s Kelly. It’s a girl’s name, but I’m not a girl.”

You giggle and you turn your head to look at me.

“I know you’re not a girl, silly. You’re my best friend.”

You nod, like you’re asking me to confirm your declaration one more time. I nod back.

“You’re Kelly,” you say, sincere all of a sudden. “And you’re my best friend.”

_You do realise that’s not even close to how it actually happened, right?_

He’s always maintained a different version of events. Several different versions of events. He changes his mind every time he tells the story.

_That’s because your story sounds like the end of a damn Hallmark movie…_

But it wasn’t the end though, was it? It was only the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Catteo for the beta and _The Temper Trap_ for the title.


End file.
